...and this is how I feel

I need a true vacation!  I've been working, working, working, and a couple of my co-workers have been total jerks.  I am going in tomorrow to confirm whether or not I can take a 30 day leave next month. 

My sister is in a long-term care facility now.  The day my brother okayed her townhouse to be placed on the market, there was an offer.  We now need to move her belongings from Blacksburg, VA to Danville, IL.  I am afraid my brother is going to throw out most of her stuff.  I don't know why, but I just get that feeling.  I am more worried about Michelle, my other sister right now.

While I have spent a lot of time online learning about brain tumors over the last year, she is just now "getting up to speed", as she said today.  She's reading about all sorts of trials and treatments, but at the same time is afraid she's gotten involved at a point when it's too late.  I am afraid she's going to feel guilty about that down the road.

I went to see my doctor today.  I have lovely bumps on my legs and arms that I had 5 years ago.  I mainly just went to get the same prescription I got from the dermatologist back then, but (even though) he was running way behind, we sat and answered questions I had about my sister's situation.  As annoyed as I sometimes get with his office staff, including his wife, I can never bring myself to leave because he has such a great demeanor and is always extremely helpful. 

Wow! I just found that my other blog is findable on the search engines. Simple pleasures!

Anyway, I've filled out the application for the community college closest to where I live. I think I am either taking beginning statistics or biology starting in August. I am completely stressed out over things at work. I never want to be there. Even though I've been warned about the politics and red-tape in the medical field, I think I am going to try to get into a social work program. No, not so that I can go in and take kids out of bad homes. The FL Dept of Families is almost as bad as leaving them in the abusive homes, since the dept can't keep track of the poor kids. After dealing with a couple social workers over the last 3 months for Debbie, I decided the the first two (not the one at the rehab center in Salem) that we worked with were incompetent and I could do a better job than they were doing.

I am slacking off here. It's been nearly a month.


I did make it to the Rotunda in the Capitol in Washington. I stood in line for 5 hours and 10 minutes. My sister, Michelle, saw me on C-SPAN. There were so many other things I wanted to see in DC, but after driving all day and staying up all night, I took a nap in the car in West Potomac Park (by the Potomac R., of course) and then headed down to Blacksburg.

Since I've been back, it seems like it's been work, work, work and it's hot, hot, hot.

I've been really annoyed lately. Partly work, partly parents.

With all that's going on with my sister, I am sure there are people wondering why I take on a lot of the responsibility, but they look at it from the surface. I am the only other single one in the family. Dad (though my brother didn't like it when I suggested it) seems to be bordering on early stages of some sort of neuro/memory problems. My mom is taking care of my grandma here in FL who has lung cancer and in general, isn't in the best health. On top of that, she doesn't really seem to understand or want to try to understand anything other than Debbie is going to die in her lifetime. A lot of people will say "Oh, a parent just worries and you can't understand it until you have your own children", but that's not the type of situation. She doesn't even try to help. She just wants to wrap everything up as though Debbie can't give her own input and almost as though she's already gone. In anger, there have been a couple times I wanted to tell Debbie that our mother was ready to give her dog away to the pound. (Debbie's dogs are like her children). I know that doesn't solve anything, and at the moment, Max is contentedly snoozing about 3 feet away from me.

Work is work. We've had a turn-over in managers over the last 6 months or so. 4 our of 5 have transferred. The one who is left is good, but sometimes I get the feeling he is just over the place and just comes, puts in his time and leaves. Two new managers seem to be alright. I haven't had much interaction with them. The other two need to jump on the next rocket leaving from Canaveral and take a trip far, far away. One of those two hasn't even finished being trained in the area and has already come to the conclusion that the department is broken and this person's mission is to correct all the ills! The other person has such chip on the shoulder, all that gets accomplished is talking issues to death. I had a specific run in with that one, where I was thought to have done something wrong, and when I said this person was wrong, they wouldn't listen to my explanation about it, had to do the "research" of the situation on their own, and came back with pretty much the exact same information I already knew, but complained about having to take time away from other things they needed to work on. *big rolling of the eyes* With things like this happening, they wonder why employees keep leaving and new ones don't want to stay.